April 30, 2017

You are invited to join Washington Poet Laureate Tod Marshall and poets Luther Allen, Jim Bertolino, Michael Daley, J.I. Kleinberg, and Nancy Pagh as they present selections from Washington 129, today at 2:00pm at the Anacortes Public Library. Washington state Poetry Out Loud champ Addi Garner will also recite and read a poem.

April 29, 2017

Are you ready? Today, Saturday, April 29, 2017, is Independent Bookstore Day. It’s celebrated nationwide with a variety of festivities, including author appearances. But in the Seattle area, 19 participating indie booksellers have thrown down the gauntlet: visit all 19 stores, get your IBD passport stamped and you will receive a 25 percent discount at all participating stores for a year. (It’s still National Poetry Month and a lot of stores are offering discounts on poetry books, so this is a great time to pick up those titles you’ve been wanting.) See the list of participating stores on the Bookweb Indie Bookstore Challenge page.

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April 25, 2017

Perhaps you’ve been wondering whether or Why Reading Poetry Is Good For Your Brain. JR Thorpe offers an answer — in the affirmative — in Bustle. Poetry, apparently, stimulates emotions, language and memory, even if we know nothing about it. The author concludes there’s much more work to do, but this article is a good place to begin.

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April 23, 2017

A new Kickstarter project is currently seeking modest funds to complete the budget for a symphonic poem for soprano and orchestra. Composer Rob Goorhuis will write the score for Walt Whitman’s poem A Child Said, What Is The Grass from Leaves of Grass.

The world premiere of the completed work will be performed by the Dutch Fanfare Orchestra with soprano Fenna Ograjensek at the Dutch National Championships Finals on November 12, 2017, in Enschede, The Netherlands. Read more on Kickstarter.